Derrick Russell

FUN FACTS ABOUT GIRAFFE'S

by Derrick Russell,posted Jul 23 2014 10:26AM

So a friend of mine posted on Facebook "Why do Giraffe's have horns?" And my first response was "Giraffes have horns? What?" And then I looked at a picture of a Giraffe... and they do! kinda... Here is another picture of a Giraffe head as a refresher.

So those things on its head kind of look almost like horns! And they almost kind of are horns! I went to the internet and Wikipedia told me they are called Ossicones and are actually more like stubby little antlers than horns. Giraffes don't use them for anything anymore, but they aren't hurting anything either so they just are just there... being Ossicones. But the ancestors of Giraffes did have crazy horned antlers as this skeleton shows

Then somewhere down the line they decided leaves looked more delicious than grass so they went the long neck route and the antlers went the way of slap bracelets and pet rocks. So if you ever thought about Giraffes as long-necked horses... they are actually just long-necked deer.

And that is your fun fact about Giraffes

P.S. I got all these photos from the Giraffe Wikipedia page which you should definitely check out if for whatever reason you want to learn more about giraffes... but the last photo on the page talks about giraffes being exported all over the world in the olden times and they have a drawing of a Giraffe during the Ming Dynasty in China and it made me chuckle:

that guy is like "Dude, what is this?" He is probably even wondering why the thing has horns... but you and I both know they aren't horns... they are ossicones.